Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to introduce my first private member's bill, with support of the member for Scarborough—Rouge Park, on community benefit agreements (CBAs) and federal spending on infrastructure.

CBAs are a new approach to development and growth in neighbourhoods all across Canada. CBAs create community wealth, quality jobs, training, responsible growth, and a healthier environment. CBAs empower communities to make development work for them. CBAs are about fairness and broad community participation in the development process, resulting in everyone getting a slice of the development pie.

My riding of York South—Weston has a section of the Eglinton crosstown LRT project, a project that has embraced a community benefits approach and is a great example of a community that would benefit from CBAs being a component of federal spending on infrastructure projects.